Recall opponents are using the same playbook

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A graphic from the website of One Sunol, the group opposing the recall of two Sunol Glen school boardmembers. Alameda County DA Pamela Price, Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao, and Sunol school boardmembers Ryan Jergensen and Linda Hurley, pictured above, are all using the same strategy to fight off their recallers.

RECALLS

SUNOL GLEN

—SAME PLAYBOOK—The de rigueur response to recall campaigns in the East Bay has been to label the opposition as outsiders bent on overturning the will of local residents.

—Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price’s early response to the recall that now threatens her administration was to call it an effort of Republicans and the far-right. Her current strategy is to label the recall a bid by rich businessman intent on “undemocratically” removing Price from office.

—Similarly, the early grassroots response from those opposing the recall of Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao is to place its origins with tech financier Ron Conway, a major political figure in San Francisco, but not so much in the East Bay.

—Over in Sunol, where the most likely to succeed recall effort resides, the argument is the same.

—Sunol Glen school boardmembers Ryan Jergensen and Linda Hurley will face a recall election sometime this spring after the Alameda County Registrar of Voters on Feb. 28 approved recall petitions for both.

—“Reject the outsider-driven recall,” says the website for One Sunol, the group opposing the recalls of Jergensen and Hurley.

—The recall campaigns in the East Bay within the past year, including another against state Sen. Aisha Wahab, were fueled by a set of general complaints.

—But the furor against Jergensen and Hurley is essentially a single act, a vote led by each to create a flag policy that allows only the raising of the U.S. and state flag over the district’s lone school grounds.

—Members of the LGBT community and others in Sunol, and nearby areas, viewed the policy as a move to block the raising of the Pride flag.

[Correction: Monday’s newsletter incorrectly stated the recall petition deadline for Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao. It is July 22.]

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